A Simple Soft Touch
by Darling Summers
Summary: Sephy and Callie visit Callum's grave. Malorie Blackman owns all, R and R, please!


_**This is my first attempt at writing for Noughts and Crosses, so I hope it's not too pathetic :) I didn't have the book with me when I was writing it, so please excuse any little canon mistakes!

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_**A Simple Soft Touch  
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I looked at the derelict plot of ground in disbelief.

"This… this can't be it." I whispered. Mum smiled sadly at me, and placed a comforting hand on my shoulder.

"I'm afraid so. I haven't visited this grave in almost sixteen years- not since you were a little girl."

I don't know what I had been expecting, but this? This definitely wasn't it. When Mum told me that we were going to visit my dad's grave, I had envisioned a stretch of land with well-thought-out plots of earth covered in decorative stones and flowers and surrounded by neatly manicured lawns, like the graveyard where Nana Hadley was buried. This wasteland couldn't have been further from it. Rotting wooden railway sleepers were placed in rectangular formation haphazardly around the grass, the only visible barrier between the graves and the land surrounding it. Weeds sprung up both inside and outside the graves, obscured by the knee-length grass that covered the graveyard. I knelt down at the grave that Mum had pointed out and read the inscription aloud.

"Here lies Callum McGregor, survived by Jude and Margaret McGregor, his loving brother and mother," followed by an indecipherable date, and the all too familiar, "May he rest in peace."

I turned around to ask Mum what the date on the grave was, but she had left to get the rest of the things she had brought from the car. She had already deposited a small tub of roses where she had been standing, and I broke off a tiny sprig of the plant, and brought it to my face. Rose… as in Callie Rose? Was this Mum's way of placing my mark on Dad's grave?

I looked up, and saw Mum struggling to get a stubborn wheelbarrow through the narrow gate. I dropped the rosebud back into the pot, and ran back to help her. A few years ago, I wouldn't even consider doing something to help my mother- if anything, I went out of my way to make her life a misery. I tried not to dwell on the past, but it was a little sad that we had wasted so many years hating each other. At least, what I thought was hating each other; I know now that Mum loved me through it all.

I looked curiously at the contents of the wheelbarrow. It was filled to the brim with flowers, and a trowel and rake perched on top of the nest of blossoms like tiny metal birds. We reached the grave and Mum started to unload the flowers carefully. At a second glance, I realized what all of the flowers had in common; they were all _roses._

"These roses are from your Nana Hadley's rose patch- it was where Callum first found out about you. I think he would have liked that." A translucent tear trickled down my face as I recalled what Mum used to tell me about Dad; that he was a gardener who was killed by accident. So there was a little truth in that, after all. If nothing else, I could see where she had gotten the inspiration from. She shot me a look of apologetic sympathy- she knew what I had been thinking about, and it made me feel a little uncomfortable.

"Are you going to put stones around the roses?" I asked, to change the implied subject.

"They wouldn't fit in here. It would only make people upset if we put them there; they'll think that we're trying to make up for what happened by treating him like a Cross after he's died, when it's no use." She lowered herself down beside the flowers, and the conversation was over.

Mum worked in silence while I stood there- occasionally, she'd ask me to pass her one of the plants she couldn't reach, or make sure that the roses she had set down were aligned properly, but other than that, there was no communication between us. In spite of that, it was a fairly comfortable, peaceful silence. Somehow, I sensed that Mum needed to do this part on her own. A centipede crawled over my foot, and I watched the tiny insect tunnel underneath the earth, leaving a small hole in the ground. I touched the hole gently, and it crumbled in around my finger, new earth filling the hole, the only remaining trace of the hole a small imprint in the ground.

I wondered quietly if that could happen to hearts, too. Life would be so much easier if a simple soft touch could mend a hole in somebody's heart. I'm not sure if it would work for anyone- especially not Mum. I could see that she still missed my dad, and whenever we fought, I bitterly wondered why she had chosen my life over his, when she seemed to care about him so much more than she cared for me. As I watched her, toiling over the roses, completely ignorant of her dirt-stained trousers, I knew that she still really loved him, but she loved me enough to share how she felt with me, even if it wasn't put into words.

She patted the earth around the final tiny rosebush, securing it in place, and I started to walk towards the car. Mum followed soon after, but instead of climbing into the driver's seat, she opened up the boot again. I peered around the side of the car, but a large white tombstone obscured my view. A muffled voice came from behind it.

"Could you help me bring this over, Callie?" I tentatively took hold of one edge of the stone and helped Mum to haul it over to Dad's grave. Tears welled up in my eyes as I saw what was written on it. Not only had the proper date been put up, two new names replaced Jude's. Persephone Hadley and Callie Rose McGregor.

"Wait there," I was instructed, as Mum carried the old headstone to the car. She came back with something in each hand, and she passed the object in her right hand to me. I opened the lid of the little ornate jewellery box, and realised with a jolt that it contained every single letter that I had written to Dad. I shook my head, and handed it back to Mum.

"I can't put this here. Some of the letters…" I didn't need or want to continue.

"That doesn't matter. You cared enough to write to him; it's only fair that he gets the letters." She handed me the trowel, and, hesitantly, I dug a small hole at the only part that wasn't covered in roses, and deposited the box inside. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve, and glanced at the object in her other hand. She held up the photo frame so that I could get a better look.

It was the photograph that I had ripped into millions of tiny pieces the night that we had made up . Mum had gathered every single piece and glued them together again, and placed it inside a crystal photo frame in the shape of a heart.

And as she placed the photo frame gently on my dad's grave, I think her own heart mended a little, too.


End file.
